5 Fresh Tips to Help Manage Anxiety with Therapist and Anxiety Treatment Specialist Justine Carino
Learning how to manage anxiety can be overwhelming, but you’re not alone! Check out these 5 Fresh Tips for learning how to manage your anxiety with therapist and anxiety treatment specialist Justine Carino.
Justine Carino is a licensed mental health counselor, anxiety treatment specialist and host of “Thoughts from the Couch” podcast. Justine currently maintains a private practice in White Plains, New York and helps individuals and families improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, move through feelings of grief, and recover from dysfunctional family relationships. Justine also has a signature 1:1 anxiety coaching program. Justine has over 10 years of experience and uses both cognitive behavioral therapy techniques and family systems techniques when working with her clients. She also has an online program for perfectionists called The Path to Peace.
As one of Justine’s clients says, “As a mom of 4 little kids and founder of a company, I must navigate through multiple tasks during the day. Still, in just seven days, I learned the importance of taking care of my well-being while being mindful of my anxiety.”
You can learn more about Justine Carino on her Fresh Starts profile.
5 Fresh Tips to manage your anxiety:
Practice mindfulness. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn (molecular biologist) has defined mindfulness as “the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally.”Mindfulness is about being fully in the present moment. When we are anxious, we are thinking about the future and all of the things that can possibly go wrong. If you are thinking of all of the worst-case scenarios that could be a future outcome of a decision, you are NOT in the moment. Your body is physically present but your mind is in the future. And guess what, all of those worst case scenarios are highly unlikely to ever come true. There are many ways to practice mindfulness and I actually have an episode coming out on my podcast "Thoughts from the Couch" that dives into ways to practice this.
Challenge your self-talk because you can't always believe what you think. Self- talk is the conversation we are having in our own heads all day long. Sometimes you realize you are having these conversations, but most of the time you have no clue. Let me tell you a little about the importance of recognizing how you talk to yourself. Our thoughts lead to how we feel, which leads to our behaviors and actions. We have over 6,000 thoughts per day and 70% of these thoughts are negative! That means only 30% of our thinking and self talk is positive or neutral. Believe it or not, we were actually programmed this way for our survival as cave people. We have to think negatively to act and protect ourselves. And our negative thinking is not often accurate and can be really irrational. And if we are thinking negative, we are feeling negative. We actually have to put in some effort to recognize our thoughts and challenge the validity of them. Most of the time we are just jumping to negative conclusions without much evidence.
Give your anxiety a name. Name the anxious part of your mind just like you would name a new pet or baby. Give it a name and a personality. You can ask yourself things like…If your mind was a person, place or thing, who or what would it be? Would it be the annoying girl from high school? Is it a blob of glue? Who does it remind you of? Is it like an actual person that you know and can’t stand? What does your anxious mind look and act like? If you can personify your mind and treat it like it is separate from you, then you can kindly tell it to leave you alone. Anxiety is all about protection, that's how we are wired. It shows up to keep you safe, but sometimes it's overactive, like a workaholic. You can tell your anxiety that you appreciate their gestures to protect you, but you don’t need them to decide things for you anymore.
Create a worry ritual. If there is something on your mind that you can't stop thinking about, then start to give it a time and place to take up space in your mind. You give is a container in your life. You can create a ritual in which you sit in the same place at the same time every day and set a timer for 10 minutes. Maybe you light a candle, or lay on your bed or sit outside, and you worry about your worries until the timer goes off. Once that timer hits, you say thank you worries for trying to help me problem solve but I need to move on to the rest of my day. Worries are useful because they try to get our attention to problem solve or find solutions, but excessive worry does absolutely nothing for us so sometimes we have to place it into a container
Learn to set boundaries with your time, energy and relationships. Saying "no” and doing less can be very scary for some people, but overcommitment leads to resentment, stress, avoidance and poor relationships. Learning to set boundaries is very complicated, but it's a process that leads to less stress and anxiety overall. It doesn't happen over night and needs to be done in baby steps, but slowing down and taking care of yourself does wonders for your mood.